How to limit your phone when studying

When sitting down to study, your phone can be the most tempting thing with a five minute scroll turning quickly into thirty. Phones are the prime source of procrastination and although they can be an extremely useful learning resource, they’re often hindering your learning rather than helping!

Phone learning can be a great resource for revising flashcards on the go, watching tutorials or working things out via FaceTime as a group, however they’re not the best when trying to revise alone, learn new content, go over lectures and practice papers, often giving you an excuse to stop as soon as the next notification pops up!

Even the time taken to read the notification and reply to that one message can stagger your productive flow, since starting studying is always the hardest and getting back into can be even harder.

Limit the time

One way to limit your phone use is through limiting the time you’re allowed on each app everyday – this can be different for each app. For example, giving yourself an hour on social media means you’ll be less likely to use it to procrastinate studying. This forces you to ration your time on your phone and can improve your productivity since you won’t get wrapped into a social media scroll until you know you can relax and enjoy it! This can be done via settings, however a quick google search will tell you how to do this for each specific phone.

Use an app

If you think you’ll only turn off the time limit the minute it comes up, this tip may be better suited to you! The Flora app is a fantastic tool to increase your productivity and build those habits positively. This doesn’t only have to be used for studying, just any task where you need to be focused and away from your phone.

It can also be combined with Pomodoro study method as you set yourself a time and a break time. Once you press start, a tree will begin to grow and finish growing when the timer ends. Keep in mind that if you turn off the Flora app or stop the timer, the tree will die. As you continue to build up the trees, you’ll soon create a forest of productivity where you can visually see how much you’ve focused and how far you’ve come! It turns focusing into a game and is a great tactic if you enjoy a reward at the end too.

Turn off notifications

Another simple way to boost your productivity is to simply turn off your notifications! Although it may sound extremely simple, this means you won’t be distracted with a new notification every five minutes distracting your mind. Instead, this will allow you to stay focused on your task and keep going for a longer time than you normally would.